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JEFFERSON DAVIS: 



A STATEMENT 

CONCERNING THE IMPUTED SPECIAL CAUSES OF HIS LONG 

IMPRISONMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED 

STATES, AND OF HIS TARDY RELEASE BY 

DUE PROCESS OF LAW ; 



CONTAINED IN 



A LETTEE 



FROM THE 



HONOURABLE GEORGE SHEA, 

OF NEW YORK, 

ONE OF HIS COUNSEL. 



Reprinted from the New York Tribune of January 24, 1876. 



LONDON: 
EDWARD STANFORD, 55, CHARING CROSS, S.W. 

1877. 



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PREPARATORY NOTICE. 

During the session, 1875-6, of the Congress of 
the United States, a bill was introduced to grant 
universal amnesty to all persons engaged on the 
Southern side in the late war between those States. 
Mr. Blaine, now the Senator from the State of Maine, 
urged upon the House that the bill should by name 
exclude the Honourable Jefferson Davis, President 
of the late Southern Confederacy, from the intended 
beneficial relief of the proposed legislation, for the 
reason that Mr. Davis had conducted the war in a 
manner not permitted by the rules of civilised 
nations, especially in the treatment of prisoners. 
Mr. Blaine's speech was very violent, and intended 
to further increase any unfriendly feeling which 
may yet exist against Mr. Davis, and, as there was 
no cause for personal animosity between them, it 
was thought, and regretted, by many people of both 
political parties in America that Mr. Blaine's purpose 
was simply to promote partisan objects. The letter 
of Chief Justice Shea was published in the New 
York Tribune, the leading organ of the Republican 
party in America, and is so generally accepted as 
an authentic and full refutation of those charges, 

b 2 



( 4 ) 

reiterated at this late day by Mr. Blaine, that we 
think it advisable to publish it in a form more 
durable than that afforded by the pages of a daily 
newspaper, and likewise bring it within the reach of 
all those who are interested in the truth of an im- 
portant episode in the late American struggle ; and 
about which there has been so much debate in 
their national councils, and among their people. 
Of the letter now republished The Tribune in its 
issue of January 24, 1876, says, in a leading 
editorial, " No more important statements than these 

concerning that phase of the civil war have been 
given to the public." 



THE LETTER. 



To the Editor of The Tribune, 

Sir, — I apprehend no one will accuse me with 
having ever harboured disunion proclivities, or of 
any inclination toward secession heresies. But 
truth is truth, justice is justice, and an act of 
proposed magnanimity should not be impaired by 
both an untruth and an injustice. The statement 
in the House of Eepresentatives on Thursday last, 
made by General Banks during the debate on the 
proposed Amnesty Bill, was more entirely correct 
than, perhaps, he had reason to credit. 

What I now relate are facts : Mr. Horace Greeley 
received a letter, dated June 22, 1865, from Mrs. 
Jefferson Davis. It was written at Savannah, 
Georgia, where Mrs. Davis and her family were 
then detained under a sort of military restraint. 
Mr. Davis himself, recently taken prisoner, was at* 
Fortress Monroe ; and the most conspicuous special 
charge threatened against him by the "Bureau of 
Military Justice " was of guilty knowledge relating 
to the assassination of President Lincoln. The 
principal purpose of the letter was, imploring Mr. 
Greeley to bring about a speedy trial of her husband 



( 6 ) 

upon that charge, and upon all other charges of 
supposed cruelties that were inferred against him. 
A public trial was prayed that the accusations might 
be as publicly met, and her husband, as she insisted 
could be done, readily vindicated. 

To this letter Mr. Greeley at once forwarded 
an answer for Mrs. Davis, directed to the care of 
General Burge, commanding our military forces at 
Savannah. The morning of the next day Mr. 
Greeley came to my residence in this city, placed 
the letter from Mrs. Davis in my hand, saying that 
he could not believe the charge to be true ; that, 
aside from the enormity and want of object, it 
would have been impolitic in Mr. Davis, or any 
other leader in the Southern States, as they could 
not but be aware of Mr. Lincoln's naturally kind 
heart and his good intentions toward them all; 
and Mr. Greeley asked me to become professionally 
interested in behalf of Mr. Davis. 

I called to Mr. Greeley's attention that, although 
I was like-minded with himself as to this one view 
of the case, yet there was the other pending charge 
of cruel treatment of our Union soldiers while 
prisoners at Andersonville and other places, and 
that, unless our Government was willing to have 
it imputed that Wirtz was convicted and his sen- 
tence of death inflicted unjustly, it could not now 
overlook the superior who was, at least popularly, 
regarded as the moving cause of those wrongs; 
and that if Mr. Davis had been guilty of such 



( 7 ) 

breach of the rules for the conduct of war in 
modern civilisation, he was not entitled to the 
rights of, nor to be manumitted as, a mere prisoner 
of war. I expressed the thought that my services 
before a military tribunal would be of little benefit. 
I hesitated ; but finally told Mr. Greeley that I 
would consult with some of our common friends, 
whose countenance would give strength to such an 
undertaking, if it was discovered to be right, and 
that none but Republicans and some of the radical 
kind were likely to be of positive aid. Indeed, any 
other would have been injurious. 

It occurred to me, from recollecting conversations 
with Mr. Henry Wilson, 1 the previous April, while 
we were together at Hilton Head, South Carolina, 
that if Mr. Davis were guiltless of this latter offence, 
an avenue might be opened for a speedy trial, or for 
his manumission as any other prisoner of war. I 
did consult with such friends, and Mr. Henry 
Wilson, Governor John A. Andrew, Mr. Thaddeus 
Stevens, 2 and Mr. Gerrit Smith were among them. 
The result was that I thereupon undertook to do 
whatever became feasible. 

Although not in strictness required to elucidate 
our present intent, it is, nevertheless, becoming the 
history of the case simply to mention that Mr. 
Charles 'Conor was, from the first, esteemed the 

1 Since the Vice-President of the United States. 

2 Then the acknowledged leader of the radical and controlling win°- of 
the Kepublican party in the House of Representatives. 



( 8 ) 

most valuable man to lead for the defence by Mr. 
Greeley and Mr. G-errit Smith. A Democrat of 
pronounced repute, still his appearance would im- 
port no partisan aspect to the great argument, and 
would excite no feelings but those of admiration 
and respect among even extreme men of opposite 
opinion. Public expectation looked to hiin, and soon 
after it was made known that he had already volun- 
teered his services to Mr. Davis. Mr. O'Conor's 
course during the war was decided, understood, and 
consistent, but never offensive nor intrusive ; his 
personal honour without reproach ; his courage 
without fear ; his learning, erudition, and propriety 
of professional judgment conceded as most eminent. 
There was a general agreement among the gentle- 
men of the Republican party whom I have men- 
tioned, that Mr. Davis did not by thought or act 
participate in a conspiracy against Mr. Lincoln ; 
and none of those expressed that conviction more 
emphatically than Mr. Thaddeus Stevens. The 
single subject on which light was desired by them 
was concerning the treatment of our soldiers while 
in the hands of the enemy. The Tribune of 
May 17, 1865, tells the real condition of feeling 
at that moment, and unequivocally shows that 
it was not favourable to Mr. Davis on this matter. 

At the instance of Mr. Greeley, Mr. Wilson, and, 
as I was given to understand, of Mr. Stevens, I 
went to Canada the first week in January, 1866, 
taking Boston on my route, there to consult with 
Governor Andrew and others. While at Montreal 



( 9 ) 

General John C. Breckinridge came from Toronto, at 
my request, for the purpose of giving me informa- 
tion. There I had placed in my possession the 
official archives of the Government of the Con- 
federate States, which I read and considered, 
especially all those messages and other acts of the 
Executive with the Senate in its secret sessions 
concerning the care and exchange of prisoners. I 
found that the supposed inhuman and unwarlike 
treatment of their own captured soldiers by agents 
of our Government was a most prominent and 
frequent topic. That those reports, current then, 
perhaps even to this hour, in the South, were sub- 
stantially incorrect is little to the practical purpose. 
From those documents, not made to meet the 
public eye, but used in secret session, and from 
inquiries by me of those thoroughly conversant 
with the state of Southern opinion at the time, it 
was manifested that the people of the South be- 
lieved those reports to be trustworthy, and they 
individually, and through their representatives at 
Eichmond, pressed upon Mr. Davis, as the Execu- 
tive and as the Commander-in-chief of the Army 
and Navy, instant recourse to active measures of 
retaliation, to the end that the supposed cruelties 
might be stayed. 

Mr. Davis's conduct under such urgency, and, 
indeed, expostulation, was a circumstance all-im- 
portant in determining the probability of this charge 
as to himself. It was equally and decisively 
manifest, by the same sources of information, that 

b 3 



( io ) 

Mr. Davis steadily and unflinchingly set himself in 
opposition to the indulgence of such demands, and 
declined to resort to any measure of violent re- 
taliation. It impaired his personal influence, and 
brought much censure upon him from many in the 
South, who sincerely believed the reports spread 
among the people to be really true. 

The desire that something should be attempted 
from which a better care of prisoners could be 
secured seems to have grown so strong and pre- 
valent, that on July 2, 1863, Mr. Davis accepted 
the proffered service of Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, 
the Vice-President, to proceed as a military com- 
missioner to Washington. The sole purpose of 
Mr. Davis in allowing that mission appears, from 
the said documents, which I read, to have been to 
place the war on the footing of such as are waged 
by civilised people in modern times, and to divest 
it of a savage character, which, it was claimed, had 
been impressed on it in spite of all effort and pro- 
test ; and alleged instances of such savage conduct 
were named and averred. This project was pre- 
vented, as Mr. Stephens was denied permission by 
our Administration to approach Washington, and 
intercourse with him prohibited. On his return, 
after this rejected effort to produce a mutual kind- 
ness in the treatment of prisoners, Southern feeling 
became more unquiet on the matter than ever ; yet 
it clearly appears that Mr. Davis would not yield 
to the demand for retaliation. 



( 11 ) 

The evidence tending to show this to be the true 
condition of the case as to Mr. Davis himself was 
brought by me and submitted to Mr. Greeley, and 
in part to Mr. Wilson. The result was, these 
gentlemen, and those others in sympathy with them, 
changed their former suspicion to a favourable 
opinion and a friendly disposition. They were from 
this time kept informed of each movement as made 
to liberate Mr. Davis or to compel the Government 
to bring the prisoner to trial. All this took place 
before counsel, indeed, before anyone acting on his 
behalf, was allowed to communicate with or to see 
him. 

The Tribune now, at once, began a series of lead- 
ing editorials demanding that our Government 
proceed with the trial; and on January 16, 1866, 
incited by those editorials, Senator Howard, of 
Michigan, offered a joint resolution, aided by Mr. 
Sumner, " recommending the trial of Jefferson 
Davis and Clement C. Clay before a military tri- 
bunal or court-martial, for charges mentioned in 
the report of the Secretary of War, of March 4, 
1866." It will be interesting to mention now that 
if a trial proceeded in this manner, I was then 
credibly informed, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens had 
volunteered as counsel for Mr. Clay. 1 

After it had become evident that there was no 

1 This lias been since verified by the Hon. Andrew G. Curtin, 
lately United States Minister Plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg, upon 
information given to him by the literary executor of the late Mr. 
Stevens. 



( 12 ) 

immediate prospect of any trial, if any prospect 
at all, the counsel for Mr. Davis became anxious 
that their client be liberated on bail, and one of 
them consulted with Mr. Greeley as to the feasi- 
bility of procuring some names as bondsmen of 
persons who had conspicuously opposed the war 
of secession. This was found quite easy ; and 
Mr. Gerrit Smith and Commodore Vanderbilt were 
selected, and Mr. Greeley, in case his name should 
be found necessary. All this could not have been 
accomplished had not those gentlemen, and others 
in sympathy with them, been already convinced 
that those charges against Mr. Davis were un- 
founded in fact. So an application was made on 
June 11, 1866, to Mr. Justice Underwood, at Alex- 
andria, Ya., for a writ of habeas corpus, which, 
after argument, was denied, upon the ground that 
"Jefferson Davis was arrested under a proclama- 
tion of the President charging him with complicity 
in the assassination of the late President Lincoln. 
He has been held," says the decision, "ever since, 
and is now held, as a military prisoner." The 
Washington Chronicle of that date insisted that 
"the case is one well entitled to a trial before a 
military tribunal; the testimony before the Judi- 
ciary Committee of the House, all of it bearing 
directly, if not conclusively, on a certain intention 
to take the life of Mr. Lincoln, is a most important 
element in the case." This was reported as from 
the pen of Mr. John W. Forney himself, then Clerk 



( W ) 

of the Senate, and is cited by me as an expression 
of a general tone of the press on that occasion. 
Then, the House of Eepresentatives, on the motion 
of Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts, the following day 
passed a resolution " that it was the opinion of the 
House that Jefferson Davis should be held in 
custody as a prisoner and subject to trial according 
to the laws of the land." It was adopted by a vote 
of 105 to 19. 

It is very suggestive to reflect just here that, 
in the intermediate time, Mr. Clement 0. Clay 
had been discharged from imprisonment without 
being brought to trial on either of these charges 
upon which he had been arrested, and for which 
arrest the $100,000 reward had been paid. 

This failure to liberate Mr. Davis would have 
been very discouraging to most men; but Mr. 
Greeley, and those friends who were acting with 
him, determined to meet the issue made, promptly 
and sharply, and to push the Government to a trial 
of its prisoner, or to a withdrawal of the charge made 
by its Board of Military Justice. The point was 
soon sent home, and was felt. Mr. Greeley hastened 
back to New York, and TJie Tribune of June 12, 
1866, contained, in a leader from his pen, this 
unmistakable demand and protest : 

" How and when did Davis become a prisoner of 
war ? He was not arrested as a public enemy, but 
as a felon, officially charged, in the face of the 
civilised world, with the foulest, most execrable 



( 14 ) 

guilt — that of having suborned assassins to murder 
President Lincoln— a crime the basest and most 
cowardly known to mankind. It was for this that 
$100,000 was offered and paid for his arrest. And 
the proclamation of Andrew Johnson and William 
H. Seward offering this reward says his complicity 
with Wilkes Booth & Co. is established 'by evi- 
dence now in the Bureau of Military Justice.' So 
there was no need of time to hunt it up. 

" It has been asserted that Davis is responsible 
for the death by exposure and famine of our 
captured soldiers ; and his official position gives 
plausibility to the charge. Yet while Henry Wirz 
— a miserable wretch — a mere tool of tools — was 
long ago arraigned, tried, convicted, sentenced, and 
hanged for this crime — no charge has been officially 
preferred against Davis. So we presume none is 
to be." 

The Tribune kept up repeating this demand 
during the following part of that year, and admon- 
ished the Government of the increasing absurdity of 
its position, for not daring, seemingly, to prosecute 
a great criminal against whom it had officially 
declared it was possessed of evidence to prove that 
crime. On November 9, 1866, The Tribune again 
thus emphasised this thought : 

" Eighteen months have nearly elapsed since 
Jefferson Davis was made a State prisoner. He 
had previously been publicly charged, by the Presi- 
dent of the United States, with conspiring to assas- 



( 15 ) 

sinate President Lincoln, and $100,000 offered tor 
his capture thereupon. The capture was promptly 
made and the money duly paid ; yet, up to this 
hour, there has not been even an attempt made by 
the Government to procure an indictment on that 
charge. He has, also, been popularly, if not offi- 
cially, accused of complicity in the virtual murder 
of Union soldiers, while prisoners of war, by sub- 
jecting them to needless, inhuman exposure, priva- 
tion, and abuse ; but no official attempt has been 
made to indict him on that charge. ... A great 
Government may deal sternly with offenders, but not 
meanly; it cannot afford to seem unwilling to repair 
an obvious wrong." 

The Government, however, continued to express 
its inability to proceed with the trial. Another 
year had passed since the capture of Mr. Davis, and 
now another attempt to liberate him by bail was to 
be made. The Government, by its conduct, having 
tacitly abandoned those special charges of inhu- 
manity, a petition for a writ was to be presented by 
which the prisoner might be handed over to the 
civil authority to answer the indictment for treason. 
In aid of this project Mr. Wilson, Chairman of the 
Committee of Military Affairs, offered in the Senate, 
on the 18th of March, 1867, a resolution urging the 
Government to proceed with the trial. The re- 
markable thoughts and language of that resolution 
were observed at the time, and necessarily caused 
people to infer that Mr. Wilson, at least, was not 



( 16 ) 

under the too common delusion that the Government 
really had a case on either of these two particular 
charges against Mr. Davis individually ; and a 
short time after this Mr. Wilson went to Fortress 
Monroe and saw Mr. Davis. The visit was simply 
friendly, and not for any purpose relating to his 
liberation. 

On May 14, 1867, Mr. Davis was delivered to 
the civil authority ; was at once admitted to bail, 
Mr. Greeley and Mr. G-errit Smith going personally 
to Richmond, in attestation of their belief that 
wrong had been done to Mr. Davis, in holding him 
so long accused upon those charges, now abandoned, 
and as an expression of magnanimity toward the 
South. Commodore Vanderbilt, then but recently 
the recipient of the thanks of Congress for his 
superb aid to the Government during the war, was 
also represented there, and signed the bond through 
Mr. Horace F. Clark, his son-in-law, and Mr. 
Augustus Schell, his friend. 

The apparent unwillingness of the Government 
to prosecute, under every incentive of pride and 
honour to prosecute, was accepted by those gentle- 
men and the others whom I have mentioned as 
a confirmation of the information given to me at 
Montreal, and of its entire accuracy. 

These men — Andrew, Greeley, Smith, and Wilson 
— have each passed from this life. The history of 
their efforts to bring all parts of our common 
country once more and abidingly into unity, peace, 



( 17 ) 

and concord, 1 and of Mr. Greeley's enormous sacri- 
fice to compel justice to be done to one man, and he 
an enemy, should be written. 

I will add a single incident tending the same 
way. In a consultation with Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, 
at his residence on Capitol Hill, at Washington, in 
May, 1866, he related to me how the Chief of this 
" Military Bureau" showed him "the evidence" 
upon which the proclamation was issued charging 
Davis and Clay with complicity in the assassination 
of Mr. Lincoln. He said that he refused to give the 
thing any support, and that he told that gentleman 
the evidence was insufficient in itself, and incre- 
dible. I am not likely ever to forget the earnest 
manner in which Mr. Stevens then said to me : 
" Those men are no friends of mine. They are 
public enemies ; and I would treat the South as a 
conquered country and settle it politically upon the 
policy best suited for ourselves. But I know 
these men, sir. They are gentlemen, and incapable 
of being assassins." 

Yours faithfully, 

George Shea. 

No. 205, West Forty-sixth Street, 

New York, January 15, 1876. 



1 See Appendix ou page 18. 



( 18 ) 

FromtheNEw York Herald, September 10th, 1875. 
A SHORT CHAPTER OF HISTORY. 

Lexington, Ky., September 8, 1875. 

Some years ago, when John 0. Breckinridge, 
after the fall of the rebellion, was an exile in Europe, 
a story was put in circulation that his return to 
this country was due to an invitation from the late 
Horace Greeley. This story was never contra- 
dicted, although an attempt was made at the time 
to throw doubt upon it by the political friends of 
Mr. Greeley. Since the death of General Breckin- 
ridge, the true facts attending his return to America 
have come to light, and as both parties have de- 
parted, it seems clue to history that they should be 
given to the world. 

The letter written by Mr. Greeley concerning Mr. 
Breckinridge's return is addressed to Judge George 
Shea, of New York. This, and the letter inclosing 
it, written by Judge Shea to Mr. Breckinridge, are 
as follows : 

Office of The Teibune, 

New York, April 8, 1867. 

My Friend, — Since nearly all the military chiefs of 
the South in our late struggle — Generals Lee, Johnston, 
Beauregard, Longstreet, &c. — have stoutly advised their 
people to accept their situation unreservedly, and organise 



( 19 ) 

their respective States, in accordance with the dictates of 
Congress, it seems to me a pity that the presence and 
counsel of General Breckinridge are wanting. We need 
them not in the South proper, but in his own Kentucky, 
where a most unfortunate attempt to perpetuate class 
distinctions, which have no longer any national justifica- 
tion or solid basis, threaten to perpetuate a feud and a 
struggle, which can do no good and must work- great 
mischief. I wish, therefore, that you would communicate 
to General Breckinridge my assurance that his presence 
in this country (which is still his country) is needed, and 
will not, I think, provoke any exhibition of ill-will. 

Yours, 

George Shea, Esq. Horace Greeley. 



54, William Street, New York, 
April 17, 1867. 

My dear Sir, — I enclose a letter which I have re- 
ceived from my friend, Mr. Horace Greeley, which I 
would have forwarded by the former mail had I then 
known your address. The letter will speak for itself, and 
I send you the original (with Mr. Greeley's cordial concur- 
rence), so that, if you act upon the suggestion it contains, 
it may be in your power to make such public use of the 
letter as your own convenience and judgment may 
approve. 

Last summer I thought it would be prudent under 
certain assurances, which I had reason to believe would 
be given to us at Washington, for you to come into 
the United States, and I designed to go to Canada 
and confer with you on the subject ; but just as I was 
about to go there I heard that you were leaving for 



( 20 ) 

Europe to return this spring. I thought it better to 
delay. 

I have frequently spoken to republican gentlemen in the 
United States Senate and House of Kepresentatives as to 
yourself, and find no ill-will against you personally ; 
indeed, they generally have the same thought and wish, 
so well and manfully expressed by Mr. Greeley in the 
enclosed letter, that your aid is needed by all interests 
here, especially in your own Kentucky. 

I write briefly and in haste, as I wish this to leave by 
to-day's mail, which closes within the present hour. 

I am, most faithfully yours, 

Geokge Shea. 
To the Hon J. C. Breckinridge. 



London : printed by edward Stanford, 55, charing cross, s.w. 



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